How to configure logging to syslog in Python?

I can't get my head around Python's logging module. My needs are very simple: I just want to log everything to syslog. After reading documentation I came up with this simple test script:

import logging
import logging.handlers

my_logger = logging.getLogger('MyLogger')
my_logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

handler = logging.handlers.SysLogHandler()

my_logger.addHandler(handler)

my_logger.debug('this is debug')
my_logger.critical('this is critical')

But this script does not produce any log records in syslog. What's wrong?

Change the line to this:

handler = SysLogHandler(address='/dev/log')

This works for me

import logging
import logging.handlers

my_logger = logging.getLogger('MyLogger')
my_logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

handler = logging.handlers.SysLogHandler(address = '/dev/log')

my_logger.addHandler(handler)

my_logger.debug('this is debug')
my_logger.critical('this is critical')

You should always use the local host for logging, whether to /dev/log or localhost through the TCP stack. This allows the fully RFC compliant and featureful system logging daemon to handle syslog. This eliminates the need for the remote daemon to be functional and provides the enhanced capabilities of syslog daemon's such as rsyslog and syslog-ng for instance. The same philosophy goes for SMTP. Just hand it to the local SMTP software. In this case use 'program mode' not the daemon, but it's the same idea. Let the more capable software handle it. Retrying, queuing, local spooling, using TCP instead of UDP for syslog and so forth become possible. You can also [re-]configure those daemons separately from your code as it should be.

Save your coding for your application, let other software do it's job in concert.